The Carrefour Group has announced plans to install photovoltaic power production equipment across 350 hypermarket and supermarket car parks in France.

The French supermarket group has partnered with GreenYellow, an energy transition company, to roll out the shade structures equipped with solar panels.

GreenYellow will finance the structures, which will produce around 450 GWh per year - enough energy to power a city of 200,000 inhabitants.

As a result, Carrefour said it will see a “significant” reduction in its energy bills, adding that the energy produced will cover around 20 per cent of Carrefour stores’ needs.

Instead of being stored, any surplus energy produced will be transferred to the network which will generate additional revenue for Carrefour.

The company’s aim to produce 1TWh of solar power per year from France, Spain and Brazil by 2027 forms part of its plan to up the value of its real estate assets.

Additionally, the company aims to fully run on renewable energy by 2030.

“This partnership is a major milestone in our Carrefour 2026 plan, which places the fight against climate change as one of its key strategic objectives,” said Alexandre Bompard, chairman and chief executive officer of the Carrefour Group. “We are thus accelerating the large-scale deployment of photovoltaic power plants in our stores in order to achieve our goal of using 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2030.”

He continued: “GreenYellow’s expertise will enable us to succeed in this major impact project, which is as virtuous for the ecological transition as it is for the value of our real estate assets.”

The move comes after US retail giant Walmart announced earlier this year a new commitment to deliver around 1 gigawatt worth of new clean energy projects across the US.

Among these, two new solar projects have been developed in partnership with Pivot Energy and Reactivate, which will produce around 160,00 MWh of clean energy per year when they are operational.

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